The goal of this project is to develop powerful algorithmic sampling techniques which allow one to estimate parameters of the data by viewing only a miniscule portion of it. Such parameters may be combinatorial, such as whether a large network has the "six degrees of separation property", algebraic, such as whether the data is well-approximated by a linear function, or even distributional, such as whether the data comes from a distribution over a large number of distinct elements.

Jouya Jadidian has been awarded the best student paper prize at IEEE PPPS 2013, the combined 19th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (PPC) and the 40th IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS) which was held June 2013 in San Francisco, CA, for the paper entitled, “Abrupt Changes in Streamer Propagation Velocity Driven by Electron Velocity Saturation and Microscopic Inhomogeneities.”